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In mid July I took a few days off to visit my friend Irène who lives in Rimouski, some 330 km downstream from Québec City. Irène drove me around from "Le Bic" (extreme left on this map), to "Pointe-au-Père", (extreme right), so I could take these pictures for you.
Rimouski is a small city of less than 50 000 but it has a university, an academy of music, several museums and art galleries, a maritime research centre and proud people set on making their town a significant cultural centre.
Located just beyond the reach of the highest tides, her house enjoys fabulous views of the great St-Laurence River halfway between Rimouski and Pointe-au-Père. The north shore can sometimes be seen across 40 km of sea water on clear days.
The weather was great, the sea was calm and the sunset peacefully tender but Irène tells me that this only one of the many visages of the mighty St-Laurence. The variety of views from her porch is all important to Irène as an artist and teacher of history of art.
This panorama, opening with Irène in front of the club house, shows the Rimouski Marina with a variety of motor and sail pleasure boats. Rimouski also has a commercial and fishing port and a ferry terminal serving the north shore from Forestville to Blanc-Sablon
Here, in the centre of Rimouski are an old church transformed into a regional museum, the traditional cathedral, an a modern glass enclosed arts centre stuck between the two in spite of the outcry of the more conservative elements of the community.
The modern sculpture in a nearby park was also the object of much controversy.
Here is another view of the cathedral steeple seen from Cathedral street.
Irène and I came here to visit the studio and gallery of "Basque", an artist that I had known in 1960, when I had an art gallery in Sherbrooke, but it was closed so I took this picture of his rock garden.
Travelling west, we visited the charming village of Bic seen here.
With a traditional Quebec house...
... the handsome red "Auberge Mange-Grenouille"...
... with its pleasant garden overlooking the Bic river flowing into the mighty St-Laurence...
... and the colourful contrast between the blue "Auberge des Iles" and the adjoining yellow art gallery building.
Finally, I took this picture of the village church before travelling east past Rimouski to the Pointe-au-Père light house.
Here is the Pointe-au-Père lighthouse built in 1909 on a spit of land advancing into the St-Laurence. One fateful foggy night, on May 29th 1914, the liner Empress of Ireland had just dropped off its pilot here and was steaming towards the open sea on its way to Liverpool when it was struck by the Norwegian collier Storstad at 2:00 am. The Empress sank in 14 minutes loosing 1012 lof the 1477 passengers and crew on board.
No this is not the result of an earthquake, it's the Empress of Ireland Memorial Museum built this way with part of it slanting the same way as the wreak does on the sea floor 8 miles off the point. Rediscovered in 1980 in only 150 feet of water the wreak has become a choice destination for divers who don't mind ice cold water and 5 knot currents.
My visit over, I took this picture of Rimouski from the bus.
And this one of the Bic river flowing into the St-Laurence at high tide.
Charming Rimouski and its tranquil countryside was such a change from bustling Montreal that it could have been in a different country, or epoch.
I took a picture of this well manicured village but did not note its name.
Another view of the St-Laurence beyond the green fields.
A typical dairy farm with a big barn to store enough hay to feed the cows during the long winter.
This one also has a silo for maize silage and two bins for grain supplements.
This big house with three cars probably belongs to some city dweller attracted by the view.
It started to rain so I plunged into a book for the rest of the 7 hour trip to Montreal.
Montrealers also like to have a secondary residence where they can escape the hustle and bustle and the pollution of the city to ejjoy the tranquil beauty of nature. They do not have far to go to reach foothills of the Adirondack mountains in the Eastern Townships to the south-east or the ancient Laurentian mountains close by to the north.
The Laurentian Mountains are part of the oldest emerged land on earth. They are the result of several uplift and erosion cycles that took place before life exploded into a multitude of forms in Cambrian times 550 million years ago. At that time, the emerged eath's crust was joined into a single land mass called Pangaea that broke up some 200 million years ago to form the continents we know today. You can see Pangaea break up by cliking on the small image on the right.
The last glaciation left the Laurentians pock marked with small lakes that provide the perfect setting for a secondary home close to nature. It was raining when I visited my friend Luc's hideaway in August but the mist had a magical quality that I tried to grasp for you in the panorama below of Lac Clair near Saint-Côme 130 km due north of Montreal.
